Why voting rights fears are growing

As a news­pa­per reporter, I always went out ear­ly on Election Day to talk with vot­ers about their concerns.

I nev­er asked any­one how they vot­ed, just “What’s on your mind?”

Because reporters can usu­al­ly post to their newspaper’s web­site, I would put those vot­ers’ com­ments, along with pho­tos of vot­ers and poll work­ers, online hours before the elec­tion results came in. While cov­er­ing the recent pri­ma­ry, I did the same kind of inter­views, but then I didn’t do any­thing with them … until now.

Most peo­ple I approached that day wouldn’t talk to me, which sur­prised me, giv­en my past expe­ri­ence inter­view­ing vot­ers. What sur­prised me more, though, was what a cou­ple of vot­ers who did talk had to say.

What most con­cerned them wasn’t fuel prices or hous­ing afford­abil­i­ty or prop­er­ty tax assess­ments — it was pro­tect­ing the franchise.

“I want to keep my right to vote,” Kristy Blackwell said when I asked what she was think­ing about as she left the polling place. She said she didn’t think she should need a REAL ID or a mar­riage license to prove her identity.

She men­tioned the pro­posed SAVE Act (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act), which is a ruse to dis­en­fran­chise mass­es of legit­i­mate vot­ers under the guise of pre­vent­ing non-cit­i­zens from vot­ing — some­thing that’s already ille­gal and so extreme­ly rare as to be sta­tis­ti­cal­ly insignificant.

Ms. Blackwell was also con­cerned about edu­ca­tion and health care, espe­cial­ly the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Centerpoint Health in Winchester has been list­ed among 35 hos­pi­tals that could close due to a loss of Medicaid fund­ing. But I found it telling that she start­ed off with con­cerns about the future of our elec­toral democracy.

She wasn’t alone.

Laura Ritchie told me she was more inter­est­ed in fed­er­al than local elec­tions because of gerrymandering.

The Supreme Court basi­cal­ly nul­li­fied the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which has barred racial ger­ry­man­der­ing for the past six decades, and the pres­i­dent is insist­ing that Republican-con­trolled state leg­is­la­tures redraw their maps to elim­i­nate Democratic-lean­ing dis­tricts. Democratic states are doing the same thing, but as a defen­sive measure.

“I’m very con­cerned about bring­ing back racial inequal­i­ty, try­ing to ger­ry­man­der vot­ing … . It’s just crazy,” Ms. Ritchie said.

She, too, men­tioned con­cerns about health care and peo­ple los­ing their insur­ance or not being able to afford treat­ment, as well as local issues such as devel­op­ment and growth. But, as with Ms. Blackwell, the first words out of her mouth were about vot­ing rights.

People’s con­cerns are legitimate.

Consider the SAVE Act, which could reshape vot­ing in this coun­try. The stalled bill that pur­ports to “safe­guard” vot­er eli­gi­bil­i­ty actu­al­ly lim­its it by mak­ing vot­er reg­is­tra­tion hard­er for tens of mil­lions of citizens.

The pres­i­dent and con­gres­sion­al Republicans say it is need­ed to pre­vent vot­er fraud, espe­cial­ly vot­ing by ille­gal immi­grants in nation­al elec­tions. But it is already ille­gal for undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants to vote, and the penal­ties can be severe: hefty fines, impris­on­ment, and deportation.

When you reg­is­ter, you sign a state­ment under penal­ty of per­jury that you are a citizen.

Think about it for just a moment: If you were an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant try­ing to sup­port your fam­i­ly and get a green card, would you risk every­thing to cast a vote in a pres­i­den­tial or con­gres­sion­al elec­tion in which your sin­gle vote is one of mil­lions and isn’t going to change the out­come? Especially if you know it’s like­ly you’ll get caught?

It makes no sense.

Still, accord­ing to a recent Politico poll, a lit­tle more than half of Americans sup­port requir­ing proof of cit­i­zen­ship to reg­is­ter to vote.

That gen­er­al­ly means a birth cer­tifi­cate or a pass­port. My birth cer­tifi­cate was miss­ing for decades until I final­ly got a cer­ti­fied copy from Frankfort so that I could get an updat­ed pass­port. But USPS had to send my cer­ti­fied copy (a pho­to­copy wouldn’t suf­fice) to the U.S. State Department in order to get my pass­port, and I haven’t got­ten it back yet.

Right now, I have no birth cer­tifi­cate, no cer­ti­fied copy, and no pass­port. So if I had to prove my cit­i­zen­ship, I couldn’t.

And con­sid­er the expense. A pass­port, which most Americans (espe­cial­ly those with low incomes) don’t have, a birth cer­tifi­cate and a Social Security card can cost hun­dreds of dol­lars. It’s a kind of poll tax.

Only 37 per­cent of Americans sup­port the SAVE Act, while 42 per­cent nei­ther sup­port nor oppose it, sug­gest­ing that most peo­ple don’t know what it does.

According to Vote.org, an orga­ni­za­tion that works to increase vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, the SAVE Act would require that you go to your coun­ty clerk’s office with qual­i­fy­ing doc­u­ments, rather than reg­is­ter online, by mail, or at the Department of Motor Vehicles, the way most peo­ple do now. And a driver’s license alone would no longer qualify.

If you’re a woman and your last name on your qual­i­fy­ing doc­u­ments doesn’t match, you would need to show your mar­riage license to explain your name change. Transgender peo­ple would need even anoth­er lay­er of documentation.

And for what? There is no cri­sis of nonci­t­i­zen voting.

A close review of the con­ser­v­a­tive Heritage Foundation’s data­base revealed a total of 68 cas­es of nonci­t­i­zen vot­ing dat­ing back to the 1980s. Sixty-eight cas­es in 40 years. That is in line with what oth­er analy­ses have found.

Federal data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services show that just 0.04 per­cent of vot­er ver­i­fi­ca­tion cas­es flag as poten­tial nonci­t­i­zens, and many of those are in error.

In fact, vot­er fraud of any kind is extreme­ly rare these days.

For 40 years, I cov­ered elec­tions as a reporter. Then, for a cou­ple of years, I was a deputy coun­ty clerk for vot­er reg­is­tra­tion and elec­tions. So I can tell you, the safe­guards against fraud are strong. In Kentucky, you can’t hack vot­ing machines because they’re not con­nect­ed to the inter­net. Voting is by paper bal­lot, and votes are record­ed both on paper and elec­tron­i­cal­ly. Almost every­thing elec­tion offi­cials do requires that there be Republicans and Democrats watch­ing each oth­er. Ballot drop box­es and vot­ing machines are under con­stant video sur­veil­lance. So are elec­tion officials.

The day after the Jan. 6, 2021 insur­rec­tion, which result­ed from the pres­i­den­t’s false alle­ga­tions of vot­er fraud, I inter­viewed Judge Julia Adams, who told me that elec­tion fraud is rare because it is dif­fi­cult. In all her years on the bench, she presided over only one elec­tion fraud case as a spe­cial judge, she said.

Judge Adams said the nation’s founders were wise in leav­ing elec­tions to states to man­age, which means that pres­i­den­tial elec­tions are in the hands of more than 3,000 local elec­tion offi­cials across an entire continent.

If you think about it, a con­spir­a­cy involv­ing those num­bers just isn’t possible.

What is pos­si­ble, though, is for an admin­is­tra­tion and its allies in Congress to dis­en­fran­chise American cit­i­zens by using fraud­u­lent alle­ga­tions of fraud as a pre­tense to inter­fere in what is a respon­si­bil­i­ty of the states in order to make it hard­er for cit­i­zens to reg­is­ter and vote. And to insist that state leg­is­la­tures redraw dis­tricts so that instead of vot­ers choos­ing their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, rep­re­sen­ta­tives choose their voters.

Citizens are right to be concerned.